Steer Around The Rocks
by Psicygni
Summary: Nyota has always done this, this push that sits him on the edge of discomfort as the necklace now sits at the hollow of her throat. Illogical to wear it, but she has never put much stock in logic, not any more than his mother did.
1. Chapter 1

_Spoilers (ish) for STB, based on the recently released clip_

* * *

When it comes down to it, there's not much to go through. Still, Spock is done well before he should be, a cursory glance through the boxes that she slowly unpacks.

"You can't just leave all that," she says when he rises from beside her, dust stirred up as he stands.

"We have other obligations," he says as if they didn't set aside today for this, carved the hours out of their schedule before even more years pass and nobody comes through here, a task put off for too long now.

"You'll want this someday," she says and gestures to the piles she's made around herself, stacks of all that he has left of the life his mother lived.

"It is not necessary to bring and therefore illogical to continue to keep."

"But her books?"

"There is only so much allotment for personal items on board."

"And-" Nyota picks up an old mug, the rim chipped and a crack through the handle. Likely why it was left behind when Amanda moved away from Earth, a battered mug regulated to a box and that box left in a mostly empty storage unit. "Don't you want this?"

"It is not usable."

"Did she make this?"

"The ship is climate controlled," Spock says, not quite looking at the blanket Nyota picks up. "It is not needed."

She works her finger into where the weave has come loose. A long ago mistake, the yarn not pulled tight enough. "Is your father coming?"

Spock at least pauses before answering. "He is otherwise occupied."

"Did you call him?"

"Is it necessary to keep past employment records?" Spock asks as if he hasn't already sorted through the box in front of him. Apparently it's not because he just sets aside the stack of filmplasts. She's sure he barely read them, not that it's strictly all that important, but still. There's efficiency with going through the stack of boxes, and then there's sidestepping the whole process.

"You said you were going to call him."

"The negotiation with the Federation Council is currently underway. He is unavailable."

"He's on Earth, though." To say goodbye to them, not that he or Spock will admit that, but there's lunch together tomorrow, and one more dinner after that before they leave. And there would have been today too, a handful more hours to see him before they're gone. "He might want some say in this."

"He does not."

In the doorway, Spock waits empty handed. She picks at the blanket again, her finger working deeper. She has a similar pile of things in her old room at her parent's house, left behind time and again, visit after visit when still nothing is worth taking with her. If she could remember what's there, it's probably half of the same things, pictures she's long forgotten the subject of, clothes she won't wear, jewelry she once liked and now doesn't want, a matching handful of mismatched earrings and tangled necklaces that Amanda long ago didn't pack for her life on Vulcan.

But she has sisters who comb through her things regularly, a niece who sleeps in that room when she visits, her mother and father to prop the door open and keep the air fresh, none of the staleness of a never visited storage unit, dust laid thick and even across every surface.

"Well, I do," she says.

"It is yours, then," he says evenly but he doesn't touch the box she picks up, not when she carries it back with them, and not later when she sets it on the floor of their new quarters next to their bags, their new uniforms, their new everything, the ship rebuilt and refurnished and recommissioned, ready for the mission ahead of them.

…

Whatever crack was in the handle of the mug extends throughout it, a spiderweb of fractures that drips hot tea over Nyota's hands. She sticks her thumb in her mouth and goes to find Scotty with it still stinging, a hard throb of leftover heat that sears across her skin.

"Can you fix this?" she asks.

"First repair of the mission," he says and within moments it's back in her hands, a fine filament of adhesive filling each crevice. "Let that sit, now. It'll take a bit to dry."

She sets it with Spock's comm and padd since he won't touch it for weeks, if ever. It'll likely just gather dust again, or maybe he'll move it to some conveniently logical spot that's completely out of sight, but for now it looks nice there, old and weathered against the pristine lines of their rooms.

…

"What're you reading?"

"It's-" She holds the cover up so that Jim can squint at it. "It's pretty good."

"Huh. Never heard of it."

"It's out of print." She had checked, thinking she should get another copy to read rather than crack open the peeling binding, but she hadn't even been able to find a copy in Starfleet's database, the hundreds of novels archived there not reaching as far back as Amanda's tastes had apparently stretched.

"You finished this one?" he asks, holding up another, thinner one, the pages yellow and stiff when he flicks through them.

"Not yet."

Jim drops down to sit next to her. "Well, we gotta pace ourselves. Only five years to go."

Spock walks in on them like that, her and Jim on opposite ends of the couch Nyota specifically requested, the only sound the rustle of pages. Feet up on the sofa is illogical and unsanitary, but Spock doesn't say anything, since to do so he'd have to look in their direction and neither of them have set down their books.

…

"I knew there was a reason the irrigation was off."

"Oh." Elbow deep in the bucket, Nyota stills. "I'm sorry."

"It's no problem, but the Cappelean roses are getting a bit dry."

"There's no other buckets on the ship," she says because she checked and the ensigns in Engineering had sent her to the geology labs where a Lieutenant bent over a spectrometer had sent her to Sickbay where Chapel had shrugged and suggested the gardens. "Here, let me-"

The soap on her hands doesn't help with grabbing the hose on the ground next to her, but Sulu just waves her off.

"They can wait a bit. You know there's a laundry service on board, right?"

"Funny." She pushes her sleeves back again even though they were soaked long ago, the cuffs heavy and dripping nearly as soon as she started. "They only do synthetics, this is wool."

"Really?" Sulu kneels down next to her, peers into the soapy murk. "Like from a sheep?"

She nods, since that's what Spock's tricorder had said, beeping its results at her as he stared at his padd, the solid, long line of his back to her.

"It's dirty. Or was." Grimy and gritty feeling once she had shaken it out, dust flying in a wide swath that hung in the air. By now it has been scrubbed out by the environmental controls, whatever particles Amanda folded into the blanket so long ago cleaned and recycled and likely spit out into the vacuum of space.

"You can use the lights in the seedling room to dry it." Sulu brushes his knees up with the flat of his palms when he stands. "And it's plenty warm in there."

She arranges it carefully on a empty table. Spread out like that, there's more than the one mistake she had found, a host of holes scattered over the blanket, and spots where the weave is pulled too tight. A distraction, maybe, while Amanda knit it, a comm call or the good part of a movie, her attention on that and not how her hands were working.

Later, folded on the end of their bed she can't see those mistakes as well, and Spock can't see them at all since he won't look at it. He's always too cold though, and even though she waits for it, he never moves the blanket and it stays a heavy weight over their feet each night when they sleep.

…

"Spock's getting you jewelry?" McCoy asks from behind her. "I thought I'd never see the day."

"Something like that." She rubs at the bridge of her nose and then digs her forefinger and thumb into her eyes so that she doesn't have to look down at the chain laid out on the table. It's ridiculous and she knows that, repeats it to herself each and every attempt she makes to work the tangle out. But every time she sets it aside as a lost cause she ends up picking it up again, the chain still knotted no matter how she picks at it.

He takes a long sip of his coffee. At her elbow is her own breakfast, forgotten now in favor of the necklace before her.

"It's pretty."

"It was his mom's."

Turns out all she needed was a surgeon's hands, because McCoy holds the knot up to the light for a moment and then bends over it. When he's done, he lays the chain out in front of her, the pendant a cheerful gleam in the bright white of the mess hall.

That night when she tries it on, it sits lower than it had before it was fixed, resting well below the stiff collar of her uniform when she tucks it there. She pulls it out again, working the stone against her fingers. There might have been matching earrings once, or a bracelet, ones that were lost long ago, or given away to a friend, or taken with her when Amanda moved, set on a dresser or in a jewelry box in their house on Vulcan.

"Did you ever see her wear this?" she asks Spock, who clear across the room is buried in his padd.

"No."

"Is it ok if I do?"

"It is yours to do with as you wish," he says, even and cool and as if he doesn't care at all, though in the mirror he's watching her, his eyes tracking the motion of her hands as she adjusts the chain. And then, "It is not regulation."

She lifts her shoulder to her ear. "I'm not on duty."

She is the next morning and the morning after that but she still doesn't take it off, the chain by then warmed through and the weight of it comforting, a quiet reminder that she can reach up and touch throughout her day.


	2. Chapter 2

_Slightly jossed by the movie, but oh well. Thanks sam for the beta :D_

* * *

The pitch of the ship beneath his feet scatters their belongings about their quarters.

Spock is halfway to the door when Jim's voice rings out, "All systems stable, no cause for alarm."

In the calm that follows, it takes Spock a moment to orient himself, though not due to the slant of the ship but the sudden disarray of their rooms. A pair of Nyota's earrings have fallen from where she placed them on her bureau and a glass that held water similarly tumbled from the nightstand. Impractical to leave items unsecured on a starship, and yet even he has grown lax as two of his padds have tipped from his desk and his filmplasts once resting next to them are now what he is certain Nyota would term 'a mess'.

As he retrieves her earrings, he also finds her stylus where it rolled out of sight, and then her padd, similarly hidden where it slid beneath a chair. These he sets aside for her in their proper places, and the chair he adjusts so as to retrieve from behind it an outdated universal translator she had brought back the previous night. Illogical to tinker with it as she had, as the device is hardly currently relevant, but articulation of such had only made her smile at him over her cup of tea. Now, he sets it carefully where she had left it, since she will surely take it up once again after her shift, though as he does so, his foot nudges yet another object.

Under the desk as it is, he does not look before he retrieves it, so that the mug is in his hand before he can even stand up. Cupped in his palm, it is utterly unremarkable. Ceramic. Heavier than he might have expected. Poorly made in all likelihood, lacking delicacy and finesse.

He sets it down. Quickly, he straightens the padds and filmplasts, retrieves the glass by the bed and places it in the recycler, and even uprights one of Nyota's boots, left askew by the sudden motion.

She returns before he can completely finish, her eyes scanning their quarters. "Everything ok?"

"What happened?"

"Energy surge in the warp core." She unzips the collar of her uniform. Always the first thing she does upon the door closing behind her, her hand rubbing along the front and back of her neck. "Scotty's response was 'oops'."

"His professional opinion?"

"He followed it with 'sir'." When she drops her hand, the chain of the necklace winks at him. He taps the filmplasts into a neater stack. "Do you need help cleaning up?"

"I am nearly finished."

"Sweet of you." On her toes, she kisses his cheek, already pulling the collar of her uniform down further. "I'll give you a hand after I change, ok?"

Her uniform is draped over the foot of their bed when she steps out of it. Her boots are lined up with her other pairs, set neatly against the wall. The necklace she leaves in a pool of silver and a flash of turquoise on her dresser. Another miscalculation in Engineering and it will slide to the floor with the earrings beside it.

She comes across the mug as she sorts through her padds, her nail tracing a divot that runs up the sides.

"It was cracked," he says, though her expression informs him this is hardly a helpful comment.

"I fixed it." Her forehead draws tight. "Scotty did."

"It-" He begins to point towards the mug, only to drop his hand to his side. A needless action, to gesture to what she holds. That Mr. Scott helped her is that Nyota would term 'news'. A curious turn of phrase and yet perhaps apt. "The motion of the ship caused it to fall."

"Oh." Her hands wrap around it. "I left it out, didn't I? Did it hit anything?"

He points to the floor. Also unnecessary. He refrains from also gesturing towards the corner of the desk.

"I didn't think. We've been at warp for so long and-" She shakes her head, turning the mug over and over in her hands as if she can see the fracture better with the repetition.

"It is hardly your fault."

"I'll take it back to him," Her nail drags up the hairline split. "I can go right now, I think he's still on his shift."

"He is likely occupied with the engines."

She touches a finger to the rim of the mug. "Yeah." Gently and with more care than is likely warranted, she sets it down.

The next morning, she is gone before he has finished showering. Boots, insignia, earrings, all missing. He casts a look at the dresser. The necklace as well.

She slides into the chair next to him at breakfast, but only has time for half of her cup of coffee and even less toast. Gray polymer coats the edge of her thumb and she spends the morning picking at it, her eyes scanning incoming transmissions and her fingers scraping at the dried adhesive. An unnecessary undertaking, to assign herself such a task in the time before their shift, though he is certain that if he raised it with her, his opinion would be readily dismissed.

He sets an apple on the edge of her console upon his return from examining the repairs in Engineering and she catches it before it can roll down the slant of her station.

…

The tray hits the table next to Spock's own just before the chair beside him is scraped backwards. Lieutenant Sulu gives him a nod, but it is obviously Nyota who he has sought out.

"Did it shrink?"

With her fork paused halfway to her mouth, Nyota's eyes dart towards Spock's.

"No," Nyota says.

"I read that water can shrink wool." Sulu looks between them both. Spock bends forward over his plate and carefully, precisely, slices another bite of _krei'la_.

"It was fine." Slowly she chews a cucumber she had speared and digs her fork through her remaining salad.

Sulu's spoon dips into his soup. "And it dried out ok?"

She pokes at a carrot. "It did."

Spock cuts another bite, a neat square that he places on his fork. He does not watch as Sulu leans forward in his seat. "And it's really from a sheep? A real sheep?"

Now, Nyota smiles, though it is a far tempered version of the normal brightness that lights her expression. "It really is."

That night, she is not asleep when he carefully lifts the covers and slides into bed next to her. Instead, she turns towards him, her palm pressed flat to her throat. Beneath her fingers, the chain of the necklace glints and flashes as she fiddles with the pendant. Illogical to not remove it before sleeping, as she so often does.

"I washed it."

There is one woolen object in the room. Hardly does he need clarification.

"I didn't realize wool shrinks."

He settles the sheet over himself. In the dark, she shifts near to him.

"I'm sorry."

Her hand is still at her neck. The bed dips as she moves even closer. "There is no reason to be."

"I should have- I really didn't know."

"As you yourself said, it is of no consequence."

Her forehead presses into his shoulder, a warm weight. "Still."

He rubs his knuckles over her thigh, just above where her knee pushes into his own. "Truly. It is no matter."

"I thought it should be cleaned."

He stares up at the ceiling. "Logical."

When she sits up, cool air rushes against his side.

"Here." From its drape across the foot of their bed, Nyota picks up the blanket, pulling it up across her lap. She extends a corner to him.

"What are you doing?"

"Just-" She pokes the fabric closer. "Take it. Please."

He does and she pulls the rest of it higher, smoothing it out across the lumps of their legs.

"I thought you had intended to sleep."

"It's the same size, right?" Spread out as it is, Nyota's eyes search over it as if the knit weave holds an answer. The lights are hardly bright enough for her to see. If it were different, he would not know.

When she lays down again, she half covers him, her arm a solid press over his waist and her leg hooked over his own. He lays his hand over her thigh rather than allow it to be trapped between them and when he rubs his hand down to her knee, she pushes her face into his neck. Laying like she is, the necklace rests as a hard lump against his arm, a bump that pricks at him where it pushes into his skin.

She does not push the blanket back down. Soon, she will be too hot under its added warmth and as she so often does, will kick the covers back in her sleep. He should remove it for her, pick up the corner she handed him and push it back down. It is illogical to have it there at all, a needless addition to their bedding. He presses his nose to the top of her head and her hair tickles his face when he places a kiss there.

…

"Did it," Jim announces from the doorway, silhouetted against the bright of the corridor. He extends both hands, each holding precarious stacks of padds. "Found them."

Nyota claps her hands together and is off the sofa with far more energy than she had when depositing herself on it, loose limbed and yawning after the length of her shift.

"How?" she asks though she does not wait for an answer and Jim does not offer one. Instead, they repeat titles to each other and tug padds from the others hands, giving no apparent compunction to the irrationality of speaking over each other.

A padd lands before Spock, obscuring the surface of his desk and sending his work into disarray. It is followed by a bound book, ages fluttering and dust puffing up. "Sequels. Why write one when you can write more? Did you read that one yet?"

None of this appears to require an answer or even a comment, despite the finger Jim presses to the cover of the novel, pushing it slightly towards Spock.

From beneath it, Spock edges out the filmplast he had been reviewing. Behind him, Jim and Nyota settle onto the couch and he does not need to turn to know that Nyota is smiling, already bent over one of the new padds.

It is when Jim has left that Nyota unfolds herself, all long limbs and grace as she crouches before their bookshelf, shuffling around the objects within.

"They're not the same."

He selects another filmplast from the stack before him. "Pardon?"

"The books. They're not the same edition. We tried. Jim even called the publisher."

Behind him, he can hear her continue to adjust the padds they keep on those shelves. "I am certain the format will hardly impede your enjoyment of them."

"I just wanted you to know."

He does not allow his eyes to pause in their track across the filmplast. "Duly noted."

"Hand me those?" Her chin tips towards the stack of padds Jim brought. With one hand, she holds back half of a shelf's contents from tipping over and with the other she reaches for the stack, though her attempt falls short. When he does not immediately rise to help her, she tries again, the motion causing the chain of the necklace to slip from beneath the light cotton of her shirt, none of the stiffness of her uniform to hold it in its place.

"There is not sufficient space for them," he says as he hands the padds to her, though this does not stop her from placing each on the shelf.

"Those too," she says, her head tipping towards the bound books, the ones she and Jim found it necessary to flip through again. They are closer to her. In all likelihood, she could get them herself.

He holds them out two at a time and when she has taken them, he again sits at his desk, bending once more over his filmplasts.

"Oh." Her intake of breath is quick. "Oh, no."

He turns, expecting to see a cover bent backwards from attempting to fit too many volumes onto the shelf, or for her to simply be out of room, but instead she has one of the books open in her lap, one finger repeatedly brushing over the open page.

"I was eating." She presses her lips together. "Or Jim was. But it's just crumbs. I can-"

Her tongue between her teeth, she drags her finger down the space between the parted pages again and then turns the book upside down to shake it. She attempts to use the back of one of her earrings, and when that fails she disappears into the bathroom. In the mirror he can watch her bent over where she has propped the book on the edge of the counter, a hairpin in one hand and the book pressed open with the other.

Before him, the bookshelf is still disordered, half sorted through with volumes spread over the rug.

Two of the padds she has left out are his, neither of which he has had need of in some weeks now. A number more are technical manuals that he does not strictly need to keep in their quarters.

She remains bent over the book, and of what he can see in the mirror, her expression is drawn tight. He sets those padds aside, and then adds to them several more padds he can similarly find a place for elsewhere. Where they had sat, he puts the ones Jim brought. Then, given that there is still room, he adds one of the bound books, weighty and slightly unwieldy in his hand, and then another.

When he is done, he stands. He does not brush his palms off, though it occurs to him that he might. Instead, he resumes his work, twice peering into the bathroom, checking that she is nearly finished.

…

Dirt puffing up around her boots, Nyota turns in a slow circle. Her palms are pressed to her forehead and her eyes move in a wide scan over the ground before her, tracing and retracing the same patch of scrubby vegetation. She is dehydrated. Exhausted too, after the away mission, which has lasted far longer than foreseen or intended.

Around them, the crew mills, hot and thirsty. Even Spock is worn at by the heat and the sun, the change from the cool corridors of the ship leaving his uniform stiff and irritating against his shoulders.

"There," Chekov says and with a single bend to the ground, stands again with the silver chain dangling from his fingers.

Nyota fists the pendant in her palm, her thumb moving back and forth over the chain where it lays draped over her hand.

On the transporter pad, she opens her hand as if checking that it made the trip with her. Illogical. He could tell her so.

Doctor McCoy steps around them, hardly the only crew member whose way to the corridor she impedes, standing where she is.

"My services are only good once," he says, a finger held out towards Nyota. "After that, I charge."

She watches him go. "He helped me with the chain."

Spock does not similarly turn towards the door that closes behind the Doctor. Nyota's thumb touches to the pendant that lays in her palm. "We are due on the bridge."

"I'll get the clasp checked. Fixed." She steps towards him. "I didn't realize it would come off like that."

Which is why it is unapproved to wear on away missions. He moves aside for Mr. Scott to make his way past them. "An unforeseen circumstance."

She rocks back on her heels, her mouth a pressed, thin line. "I'll leave it in our quarters."

"It is no matter."

"Spock."

"It is yours," he says, as he has repeatedly now. "To do with as you wish."

"I don't mean to be so cavalier with it."

"You are not." He shakes his head. "It is only an object."

"You know that's not true."

He looks away. An inane argument. And to have it here, in the transporter room, though the remaining officers have trickled past them.

"The bridge," he says and when she nods, she ducks her head down. Her fist is closed, her knuckles strained tight with the force of her grip.

"I'm going to run this back," she says, her head tipped in the direction of their quarters.

Considering the general laxity Jim allows his officers directly after an away mission, she will be at her post before the others have arrived. "Nyota."

"Two seconds."

"It is not-" He shakes his head again, as if that will help. Nyota has always done this, this push that sits him on the edge of discomfort as the necklace she wears at the hollow of her throat. Illogical to wear it, but she has never put much stock in logic, not any more than his mother did. "That is not necessary."

She does not blink as she watches him. He is certain she is waiting for him to say something else, though nothing comes.

When she raises the necklace to her throat, she turns away from him, descending the shallow steps from the transporter pad. She only stops when the claps catches in her hair, her fingers busy and working and not as steady as normal.

Her hair is a heavy slip against his fingers as he lifts it from her neck.

"Nyota," he says again as this time the clasp closes.

She settles the chain beneath the stiff collar of her uniform. "I'm still going to get it fixed."

"I am aware." Briefly, he leans his forehead against the back of her head. "Thank you."


End file.
